The invention relates to management of access to information by means of a security device. The information may be provided in a scrambled form. In that case, the security device may allow or may not allow descrambling depending on whether or not it contains data objects which represent an entitlement to access the information.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,235,415 describes an arrangement for allowing fee paying subscribers to access TV or radio programs. Data describing the program fees and the account status is contained in a subscriber held security processor such as a smart card. The arrangement includes a keyboard for requesting messages concerning the programs. As a function of the content of the requests, a module converts the data contained in the security processor into intelligible messages by using transcoding tables transmitted regularly within the television and/or radio signals.